From Self-Sabotage to Success: Lessons on Healing Childhood Trauma | with Ben Curtis

Thank you all so much for having me, Michael, it is an honor and a pleasure to be in this space with you. Michael Unbroken, in this unbroken community, the most powerful spaces I've ever found and each and every one of you being here, especially shout out to the VIP, you are giving yourself a gift today just by being here. Now, you've had a lot of presentations, you've had a lot of information thrown at you. Today is gonna be my talk with you is about heart-centered space, how I went from self-sabotage to success.

Now you've been given a lot of templates and there's recordings and information thrown at you. I'm mostly going to be speaking to you and with you and to your hearts today. So, I invite you to take as many notes as you would like, but trust that just by being here and listening, you're gonna get everything you need.

So as Michael so wonderfully introduced me, my name is Ben Curtis and I am an award-winning actor, speaker, coach, healer, and musician. I do what I love and I help other people do the same. You may recognize me best as a dude. You're getting a Dell guy, the Dell computer dude from those infamous commercials 25 years ago. Well, out of my commitment to wellness, that's right, it's all clicking now. I know where I've seen the sky, dude. Okay. I see the heads dotting.

Out of my commitment to wellness, Stella has brought me back 20 years later. I've sat in a Formula one car, I've gone to space, and you can see it all on their Instagram and that wasn't always my story.

So, the reason I'm here talking to you all today is because I did make six figures. I made seven figures. I was on national television; I was on every talk show in America and beyond. I was recognized nationally and globally. I flew my friends all over the world and I was 21 years old and I had an acting scholarship to NYU and some of you may know, may or may not, I got arrested and it overnight all went away. So, I wanna drop you and that's just one small example, a lot of you know, my arrest, but you don't know about the history of self-sabotage. And often when we see celebrities, we see people we think we know on screens, we're like, man, what's going on with this? You know, this guy has everything. These people are making money and how could they have any problems? Because there's a great quote by Jim Carey, I wish everyone could have money and fame so, they know that that's not the answer because if you have trauma in your life and you add fame and money to all of that, you're putting fuel on a fire and I didn't know that I was 20 years old and I walked right in that fire and it was as if I poured gasoline all over me.

And when I was sitting in this jail cell, I wanted to flashback to 2003. I was sitting in a jail cell. I'd just been arrested in New York City, I had a kilt with no underwear on, it was proper Scottish style, nay nickers, I got arrested outside my friend's birthday party in the lower East side. I was buying a gram of cannabis. And now I'm also an advocate for Cano cuz I've been put behind bars twice for it. And in that moment, it wasn't just like the cops didn't even recognize me, they've caught the dealer who was bringing it to me and I was the guy and it was bad luck, which is a story of my life was bad luck having it all and having bad luck. So, I got arrested, my Scottish girlfriend was not very happy, she was visiting that week. But my friends luckily brought me some, some pants and underwear and they brought it to the jail cell and what are these for? Well, he is a pro. Oh, he's not gonna make it in here, do I don't know about the guy. And they come over and they're out to me. Oh, oh yeah, there's a Dell, dude. Dude, you're getting a cell. Hey, how about that? Literally in my own prison cell, just bring on the shame guys, you know, I just bring it on. I've already beat myself up a lot, right? I had just signed. But what they didn't tell you in the news is that I just signed a half million-dollar contract that was gonna take care of me, my manager, Steven Spielberg was calling my manager's office to work with me. I was up for Terminator three. I had Jay Leno on speed dial. Literally, it all went away in that one moment.

So, there I wasn't a jail cell talking to a heroin addict who was 53 years old and he was sick and he was coming down and coming off of the heroin and he is told me how sick he was. And you know, there was cockroaches around and you know, if any of you have been to central bucking in downtown New York, hopefully you haven't been, it was pretty nasty. And this guy looked up at me and he said, wait, you know, and don't get arrested on a Friday that's another story here cuz you'll be there the whole weekend, especially not a holiday. And he said, how old are you or there a long time he finally starts to talk to me between throwing up and I said, I'm 21, sir and his face went white and he said, that's how old my son is.I really don't want to go to prison again, but I'm going Rikers and I want this to be last time. And something about me being there was like an angel for him, his son speaking to him, you don't have to do this. And then I walked outside and there was 300 journalists waiting to get me on camera to capture me and the dooms and the darkness and they did. And every dealer, of course, came outta the woodwork after that, why didn't you tell us? We got can dude, you know, it's too late. I lost that. I lost my scholarship to college. I had gotten myself all Chattanooga, Tennessee. I'm the son of a preacher kid. I'm preacher man from Tennessee. We did not have a lot of money and I'd earned my way up there and this is my dream come true. And here I was at the lowest of the lows with a homeless drug addict in jail. So, what happened? You don't have to have an awful public story like that to learn lessons.

And tonight, I'm here to tell you about how self-sabotage turned in success and it started with shame. And if I am slurring, I literally did have a tooth extracted this morning. And I just knew, I told the dentist what I had to do, I just came from my mom's 80th birthday party and I was slurring with all the other 80-yearold’s. And they're like, how are you gonna give a talk? I said, because I have something important to say in my mouth I've just gotta trust that enough will work for me to show up.

When you care about something, you take action towards it. The universe bends around it. If you don't know what matters to you, you can be lost in a sea, and there I was lost in the sea of my own darkness, of my own addiction. No matter what you've been through. You know, I beat myself up for the next 10 years because I wasn't able to get hired again as an actor. No one wanted to work with me. I started a band again. Most, I don't know if, for those of you who don't know, I've got a band called Dirty May with my wife, it's an indie Falk band, we tour the world and we've won. And so, I started a band back then, and I was with this band, Danny Fingers. We were opening for Rufuss Wayne Wright. We were touring country, playing huge venues and I was miserable, and I was falling apart. And I started to see this guy who I was in a band with, fall apart even more than drinking and pouring in anything to numb out, getting in any relationship, any drug, any alcohol, any fun, any scheduling, anything I could do, over committing, anything I could do to avoid myself.

And so, no amount of it's no wonder that fame and money didn't help solve this problem, there wasn't anything wrong with me. I didn't have bad luck, by the way. I got arrested two more times after that. I also have had a DUI, and I'm 10 years sober. So, I had a lot of bad luck leading for another 10 years after this arrest. But this wasn't bad luck, this was a cycle of shame and self-sabotage that I had learned, it was familiar. And the more closer I got to success, the more afraid I became. You cannot build a foundation on mud. If you're throwing crap in there, piles of poop, for lack of a better word, and you try to build a house on it, it sink will get work because then it, you know, the decomposition take it, you start composting the ground sinks in, the groundhogs come in, the holes fall out and you go into the dark pit. And if any of you experienced depression, I have four generations of clinical depression and anxiety in my family. I've been there with you, like to crawl on the tolls and not be a way out. But what I want to tell you is this is not personal.

The greatest gift that I want to give you all today is that there's nothing wrong with you. You have simply made it to this day, today, you've survived up until here because you've used the tools you have to survive. Everything that's worked against you is some point worked for you.

You are resilient. You are powerful. You are courageous. You are vulnerable. You are insightful. You are creative. Why do I know that? Because you're here tonight with us talking about the possible.

See, I had a cycle of shame that I had learned. If you go back even further in my life, you look at my family history. My father was the first preacher to come out as a gay man in a diocese. My mom was a school teacher who thought she should do the right thing and marry the local preacher. She wasn't even in love with my father and my father wasn't even in love with himself. He was living a lie in order to do what he thought he should do in order to receive love and validation and so did my mom. And what did those two broken things create of home? Two tabs do not make a hole. One of the greatest things we can give ourselves is self-care, which is what I teach. I teach grown men. I love working with men cuz we've been given the least amount of tools, the conditioning's still binary today. But no matter who you are, where you came from or what it was like, consider that whatever tools you were given as a kid, at some point they stopped working. And especially if you grew up in a traumatic environment like I did, there was a lot of codependency even my dad was the local preacher and we looked great on the outside. My mom worked at this fancy school. What was going on inside was codependency, shame, self-sabotage, and self-hatred and I inherited all of that. My mom's father committed suicide and she blamed herself and I inherited that too. So, I can start to tell you all the stories and all the bad stuff that happened that prove and earn my seat and why we have to be here. But you don't have to have pain in order to be here. You don't have to keep suffering in order to heal trauma.

See, when I wasn't sober and I went back into music, I used that darkness and that alcohol became my news and I played with the animal and that beast. And I brought it alive at night and it was fun, but it burned. I lost all my relationships and most importantly, I lost my relationship with myself. The reason I stopped drinking wasn't because I wanted to stop drinking is cuz I could no longer connect to my light. I was shaking in my shell. I was having internal soul, spiritual death because I wasn't doing what I love and I could not stop the cycle of self-sabotage. I even found a job working at the best music venue in New York City, bartending, getting paid to drink and play music, it couldn't get any better until I blacked out, while starring in a huge play. I lost my bartending job. I couldn't even keep that. And then I started dog walking. I couldn't even keep a dog when walking job ‘cause while I was getting sober, my brain was repairing itself. But I couldn't even organize cause the tools to be organized. And then as the money came, I couldn't hold on the much, cause I didn't have the self-esteem or the Semitic body to be able to hold wealth, I didn't value myself so how could I value money? In fact, I was taught that money was bad or evil or that rich people did bad things. Money changed you. And every famous person I saw that had money was miserable. I wanna tell you, the higher up I got in Hollywood, the more misery I saw because I saw people trying to shine their egos as their light, try to shine their success as their light. But that is all an outside job and you can still be an empty shell inside and that's what I was. And it wasn't until I stopped and I said, like, I remember calling my mom on the phone being like, how do I make it stop? And she said, why don't you ask the universe? I said, thanks mom. I tried asking the universe, you know, I'm a yoga teacher now, like I'm praying. I'm asking you. I've tried everything. You know, I've been to church. I went to synagogue. I was a Buddhist. I did everything. I've been a certified theta healer. Do you bring it, I've done it. And but I just took her advice I kept asking for help and what happened is I started to be carried. So, this is the first point where I really started to let go. And this is the key I want you to latch.

The access consciousness, if we learn to relax, we'll be able to receive 70% more of what we're asking for in our life. But if we're always out there trying to prove ourselves or fill this hole or fill this void with other things that we're never actually gonna get to know ourselves. So, I just said, you know, this arrest that I talked about, this jail cell was the greatest gift that was given to me because it made it all stop. And what I didn't tell you right before that is with the height of my fame and all the money I made, I moved into my own apartment, the financial district, and two weeks later, my backyard became as ground zero. So, I watched nine 11 happen from my bed. I ran outside, I almost died. I was caught in the subway. I developed severe PTSD on top of the generational trauma I had inherited and this was at the height of my fame. And I just remember trying to be taken seriously, I just wanna be taken seriously and at every wire I'd go outside, like do dude couldn't even see. I was bringing people joy because I was crumbling inside. So, happiness is an inside job. And one of the greatest gifts, the tool I'm gonna bring you back to that I said I wanted you to latch onto is asking for help. Sounds so easy, connection and community have proven to be, and Harvard Health just put out a study, community's the number one healer today because we can learn to co-regulate our nervous systems the people who do have the tools. We can learn to love ourselves by being around other people have learned to love themselves. So if you're here, I want to tell you that you've already taken the first step to connect with yourself to shine the flashlight in the darkness. And that's what we as coaches and speakers, and healers. I'm not here to give you something that you only have. I'm here to speak to your heart and to show you that if we walk in there together, that all that darkness that you're most afraid of could actually be some of your greatest beauty and all that light you've been hiding from is actually gonna be the thing that sets you free. But it truly is our light and on our darkness that most frightens us and why is that? Because it's more comfortable suffer because we've been, if you've experienced trauma in your life becomes familiar, it becomes a pattern and you've been programmed and you seek out to repeat that pattern even if you're trying to stop, it's subconsciously we attract people. If you've listened to attachment theory this week, avoid it versus anxious attachment. This is my wife and I for years. Run, run, run, chase, chase, chase, run, run, run, chase, right? Until we first timely, we had to stop and face some demons and turn towards each other and wait in times and we did not wanna reckon with that. The reason we were able to do that is because we had done the work before we met. I met her in recovery, we'd both stopped drinking and we were both trying not to be in a relationship and the reason I believe that we attracted each other is cuz we both finally said, enough, I'm done trying to figure it out there, I'm gonna work on the relationship with me. I'm gonna start asking people for help. Who do? And this is where I reached out my hand and a stranger grabbed it and he was a man and he gave me the biggest hug and he said, you're gonna be okay, that man became my sponsor. He introduced me to other groups in recovery, other groups of men. I found out I was really terrified of men. Why? Because I was not in touch and I did not love my own masculinity. And to push my masculinity down to relate to women better, to relate, to identify with my gay father better. Even though my father was perfectly, he had great balance of masculine feminine. I even started to get injured cuz my dad is injury prone. He died last year and I almost that day I had a surfing accident. I got a surfboard of the face and almost lost my vision the day that he went to hospital and I went to see a healer about it ‘cause I'm like, I do not wanna be connected to mother through pain. He said, would you like to destroy anywhere and everywhere that you've been connected to the person that you love and you think you have to experience trauma suffering in order to connect to them, would you like to destroy and uncreate that?

So, I'm gonna ask you that tonight for any of you and who are trying to let go of that parent or trying to hold onto that parent or that partner, or let go of that person. Can you destroy? Are you willing to destroy and uncreate anything and everything that says you have to keep suffering in order to work this out in order to heal, in order to get closer? Can we destroy and create that tonight? Yes. If you're, yes, and you know what we get to create in the face of that, when you remove those things, when you relax and start to let go, it's terrifying cuz you know what happens, your arms open up and you become vulnerable, but you also become a space for healing. You become a space for someone else to come in and give you a hug. You become a space to ask, how could this turn out better than I imagine? Show me my heart.

The only way past these emotions is through them. And one of the greatest ways you can do it as you are right now, as being here and walking through it with a professional, someone who says, you know what? I've been there. I've got you, and I may not have been in the exact same place you have, but I've walked enough, I've shined enough lights down here to know that by looking down this tunnel, you're not gonna die. And I'm gonna look at it with you and we're gonna walk through it hand by hand, and you're gonna walk out on the other side stronger than you were before.

You know, turns out my life wasn't self-sabotage. I just didn't have the tools of safety and stability. So today, so many of us are out to create safe spaces. I thought I was a victim of my own circumstances. None of us are victims, but most of us have made prisoners of ourselves because we continue to live our story as if it's real. The only reason I'm telling you my story tonight about my past is just so you know, when you see this privileged white guy looking at you, that I've also been through it and that it trauma does not discriminate, it touches everyone. In fact, coming into this world, being birthed as a trauma, you're suddenly comfortable and you're exploded in all new sensory overloads. And at the very times when you're trying to program and learn to regulate, chances are in your home, you were disrupted. And if someone didn't show up for you or create a healthy, safe bond, if they didn't teach you that you could regulate yourself or bring you back to a state of normal or teach you how to come back to a state of normal, then chances are you've been carrying this with you your entire life. And when we look up to our parents to co-regulate with their nervous systems, if they've experienced trauma and they can't return to baseline, then how are we going to? But the beautiful thing about being adults now today with this ability to listen, to practice, to learn, to soak it in, is that you have a gift to reparent yourself today. The parent you've always wanted and sought you get to be today. No one else is gonna be able to do that for you.

If there's one thing, I want you to take away is that that person out there that you're hoping is gonna solve, that no one can do that for you. That emptiness you've been avoiding, that darkness, that hole we all have one inside of us. Some say it's a God-sized hole, no matter what your religions or belief in that hole is where music is made. And that hole is where the sound resonates. We have a hole in our head so that our voice can resonate. And did you know that your human voice has a frequency specific only to itself? And one of the most healing modalities that you can use today is your own voice because the frequency of your voice is designed to heal yourself. Wow. And here we are always looking out for other people. If you start singing on a daily basis, speaking positively to yourself, have you even stopped to notice the patterns that you have today? What are the cycles that you repeat? One of the best things I believe into to changing trauma and to start to think unbroken is to start to take inventory of where we are now. What are my relationships like now? What do I want them to be? And if they were like that, what would that feel like and look like if I had that in my life today? What does my bank account look like now? How do I feel about that? If I was someone who was able to take in a lot of money and hold onto it, what would that feel like? See, everything we're looking for in life is possible through creating a somatic body to build it through, literally practicing.

So, I want to give you tools tonight that are gonna help ground you in this. We've got about 10 minutes left and I really want to give you some things to walk away with. I'm not gonna post some up here, I'm gonna talk with you. I mentioned connection and community. This is one of the greatest healings. You are already in a community right here, the unbroken community. I lead a lot of communities as well, and I have one, especially for men because I believe in creating as many safe spaces as we can. And I even talked to a therapist recently who works with men, and I asked her why and she said, because the conditioning is still binary, the social conditioning is still binary. Women are being given tools and men are not. So, if we could give men more spaces to feel anger, more spaces to work out their trauma, could they actually then support women? We all create safer spaces. And what I love about this space today is that we're all here together talking about trauma together because again, it's not discriminatory, but the conditioning still is binary. And even for women, we've gotta deal with traumas in a totally different way.

One in four women have been sexually abused. One in four women have had a miscarriage. The statistics are one in six guys have been sexually abused. But think about this, they think it's closer to one in four because think about how many men are actually speaking up about it. Probably most of us are not, this is the statistics of the one that are. So that means one in four men have been sexually abused. So, look at your household. I'm sorry if you have kids, but just this is the truth today. If you have four kids, chances are one has or well experienced some kind of sexual trauma. If you have siblings or parents, someone in your household has. Again, trauma doesn't discriminate, also doesn't mean you're about, it means that you were not given the safe spaces to be able to co-regulate and learn trust and safety. So, you've protected yourself, you've built walls and barriers to keep those people out. Your nervous system and your brain, we have a nervous system in our heart, our belly and our mind actually incredible intelligence, chances are there's one of those we've been developing overdeveloping. I can think through everything I'll avoid the heart space, so I can think through things soon we become very analytical and brilliant thinkers, or maybe we become big feelers. I'll just feel my way through everything and being really dramatic, that was how I coped with it. Or maybe we just got really inward in our bodies and we deal with a lot of ailments and we become hypochondriacs, we become afraid of always of something attacking us, right?

Michael mentioned earlier in this conference about brainwashing. He said, you're gonna get brainwashed here. I'm just gonna be straight up. And I'm telling you the same thing. I once had a coach say to me, I said, I feel like I'm getting brainwashed, he said, dude, your brain needs washing. Think about what you came in here telling me, all this self-hatred and like the negative bank account and the like, lack of clients and jobs and all that. As soon as I started asking for help and I said, you know, I'm just gonna let go. I'll just trust you. Can you help me? Can you help me? Can you help me? I just asked for help. I didn't say what it needed to look like, I just asked for help and suddenly I had a coach. I had mentors. I had a men's group. I had a female therapist to talk about through women's stuff with, I like relationship with cuz I mostly have been attracted to women so, whatever, you know, we need to work through around that. And then my wife and I have counseling and I'm bringing the gender up because it matters, but it totally doesn't it at all. But I put it, I built in support groups and then I developed a talk. I developed a show called, dude, you're Getting a Cell, it's on YouTube. It's a 20-minute excerpt of a one man show where I play that officer that arrested me, where I wear that kilt, where I reenact nine 11 where I do magic.

How and why did I do these things to heal? Do you realize if I didn't tell my story and I'd just been arrested like that and gone through serious emotional and mental trauma and abuse from officers and things and never spoken about it, what that would've done to me. I went on a thank you challenge and I thanked every police officer in New York for the next 90 days. I just didn't know how to love myself and I was afraid of my light. I still am today. I still am today terrified to be here tonight with all of you. The second I stepped in, it was like, you'd never know it cuz it leaves me, the fear leaves me because I'm connected to my purpose and what matters to me. But being people, being loved, being seen, being vulnerable still scares me and I'm a professional actor. I've been on Broadway on these shows in a row. I've taught 30 days in a row. I lead seminars like this all the time and what I know is that the love is there. I think about the space I want to be in, what I want to create, and the possibility and I literally build accountability around me so that I can't hide from the things that I care about. I had so many friends and clients, and even my mom kicked me out of her own birthday party to get here on time. So, many people checking in on me to make sure I'm taking care of myself. So many people checking in like, can you talk tonight? Is this working for you? My assistant texted me again today, like, are you physically able to talk? Does this have integrity for you tonight? I said, with half a face, I'm gonna be able to deliver what matters, they're gonna feel the heart, they're gonna feel the intention. And literally the medicine we're off like 30 minutes ago just in time for this, the bleeding stopped literally 30 minutes ago. I let go. I was trying to control it. I was having a stress, a panic attack today. And the second I let go, I was like, oh, I needed to cry a little bit. I let myself cry because I realized it was also my dad's birthday today. And my dad was my best friend and he's the reason he taught me to believe in myself and he taught me to believe a sensitive man. He taught me that it's okay to be sensitive and it's even beautiful, and that women need to see that too, they need to learn to trust men again, just like you do, just like I need to learn to trust men again, just like I need to. I can step in this space again and again and I'm not gonna die.

Public speaking's the number one fear above death. We think we're gonna die when we're with people, that's some of the times we're most taken care of, that just proves that our light is terrifies us. So, I have a few pillars.

There's pillars of wellness. I have a few pillars of self-care.

Thank you for the beautiful messages. My dad is with me and even with the grief, I allowed my heart to break open. I could have really shut down after my dad died. Do you know that I happened to have started my first men's group two months before and I was coaching these guys and that night I showed up and they're like, why are you here? I said, because this is the only place I can be today and I need you guys. And they carried me that night, right? And I talked about grief and when my wife had a miscarriage, I talked about it. And then I learned most men don't talk about it. In fact, most women don't talk about it that fourth trimester, no one talks about after the pregnancy. We've got to start talking. So, one of the most beautiful keys tonight is asking for help, just reaching out and sharing someone your truth. Or they say, we're only as sick as our secrets.

If you think that your truth is so bad, someone's not gonna love you. Sharing it with them may allow them love you more. Encourage you to start to bring that armor down and practice one day at a time. Reprogramming yourself. Practice having one new vulnerable conversation with someone. You don't have to change the world tomorrow, just do one thing that moves the needle towards what you care about.

So, here are the tools I use today.

How have I programmed trauma time with myself? I don't have time is no longer an excuse. There are too many systems, too many automated things, too many structures available out there for you to make time, you made time to be here. You have time for yourself. I love that you all are here. It lights me at up because that means you all care about yourselves. You know how hard I work to try to get people just to show up for themselves one day ahead of time. You all have done that. So, making it a part of your non-negotiable routines. The time for yourself when you sit and you say, no matter what, I'm gonna feel my feelings. I'm gonna listen to my heart. I have a stethoscope that I use to listen to my heart sometimes. You literally need to get out of and into your body. Listen to your heart, it will tell you so much. You have everything you need inside of you. And it can be really scary to sit with ourselves sometimes, but feeling these feelings are exactly what we need. We're designed to, and they don't have to mean anything, they just need to come out. You need to make safe spaces for your feelings to come out so that they don't come out some other way, it's like pop them all. If it doesn't come out this way, it'll become cancer or rage or alcoholism.

My car is my rage room. I go to the car. I've had therapists say, you know, don't tap into rage because for anger management, it's actually gonna amp it up, is I've actually said to a therapist by telling me not to express my anger in any way, you're actually telling me to push it back down. So, I'm gonna remove myself from a situation with another person when I'm charged, but I absolutely am gonna find a safe space in my anger.

So, I go to the car or I use a pillow and I scream and I rage and I cry and I yell ‘cuz our voices heal us. Our bodies keep the score. You know that book, the body keeps the score, right? That's one of the most famous trauma books. Our body literally somatically holds everything. I wish everyone could take an acting class because as you start to relax an acting class or even in a yoga class, you know, you start to relax, you feel emotions, it's cuz your body's been storing it. You need to make the space for your body to move, for your body to process. We're told as kid, once we're kids or we grow up a certain age, you're no longer allowed to express your needs. You're no longer allowed to yell. You're no longer allowed to reach for something you really want. Well, I'm here to tell you today, your inner child needs you more than ever and everything that you're looking outside for, I want you to start to practice making time for yourself and sitting with that kid. If you can't make time for the adult, make time for the kid.

Number two, have some fun.

You all are so busy trying to heal trauma that you're not actually out there living your life. So, if we were gonna reprogram ourselves, let's reprogram our life doing what we love and how do we reprogram? We take one new action. You've got a record, got a vinyl record. There's a deep groove. You've heard about the groove. You get in the groove. There's no stopping that. But once you know the groove is there and then you can catch it. You can pick it up and put it on a different song, and it may the needle may wake, its over to the groove. But if you catch again, you can put up on a different song. And eventually you keep putting this back on these new songs, the fun song, the self-care song, the time alone song, the asking for help song, the reaching out song, the accountability song. Suddenly this start getting some deeper grooves too. This outside groove of trauma doesn't go away, but suddenly you have more options to use from. So, one of the things you guys are gonna get is my self-care course for free here. And I'm gonna be teaching the Seven Pillars, and it's time for yourself and fun, accountability and partnership so you don't have to do it alone. And then just taking one action today to move you towards what you care about and then think about who spoke to you this week. You don't have to take everything, take what you want and leave the rest. Who spoke to your heart this week? Who would you like to stay in touch with? What speakers really moved you and touched you and inspired you? Because if we try to go back and get it right, we're getting back up in our heads, I wanna remind you that everything you need is inside of, I don't wanna close with this. You remember that jail cell I talked about at the beginning?

Each and every single one of you have been inside of that jail cell. The only person holding you prisoners yourself. But the little secret they don't tell you is a door's been unlocked the whole time. All you have to do is stand up and put one foot in front of the other and start to set yourself free.

So tonight, I invite you to take one more action today, tomorrow, to set yourself towards freedom, to give that little kid the love they need or the fun they need, or the connection they need. It's okay to ask someone. I want to have a date with you, and I want you to tell me everything you love about me. I'm having a hard time loving myself today. Tell me everything you love about me and every time they say something, I just want you to say thank you, thank you, and then return a favor. If we let more love in, there's no room for hate.

I invite you to practicing loving yourself until you learn to.

I invite you to keep being in communities that are loving until you learn to love yourself.

I invite you to be around people who bring you towards your light.

One of the greatest measurements of healing is this light for me.

So next time you're walking in this situation, you don't know what to choose, just check in with your heart. Is this light or is this heavy? Move towards the light.

Thank you all for being here. I hope this has been a value today and I can't wait to hear from you. Dude, you're getting well!